Global trade and financing suffer from inefficiencies because of traditional infrastructures. However, according to Martha Reyes, the head of research at Bequant, crypto can fix this issue. In an interview with Cointelegraph, Reyes shared her thoughts on the state of global trade and financing and how crypto makes this more efficient. According to Reyes, despite the growth and magnitude of global trade, areas like remittance payments still suffer from the number of intermediaries that transactions have to go through. This leads to lengthy transaction times. Reyes notes that legacy systems for cross-border payments make global trade a “prime candidate” for …

Bitcoin (BTC) is both the first and the most prominent cryptocurrency in the world when it comes to market capitalization as well as trading volume. These factors are quite significant, considering that all cryptocurrencies trade against Bitcoin and Bitcoin’s dominance can actually serve as a valuable indicator when trading all different types of cryptocurrencies. This post will offer insight on how to trade cryptocurrency while utilizing the Bitcoin dominance indicator and how to read the Bitcoin dominance index chart overall. What is the BTC dominance chart? Bitcoin dominance is uncovered by comparing Bitcoin’s market capitalization to the capitalization of the …

What is Avalanche Network (AVAX)? Launched in 2020 by Ava Labs, Avalanche is a blockchain platform that is smart contract-capable. Avalanche aims to deliver a scalable blockchain solution while maintaining decentralization and security, focusing on lower costs, fast transaction speeds, and eco-friendliness. Avalanche quickly became popular in the cryptocurrency space, with Avalanche TVL currently worth $8.41 billion and still rising across Avalanche decentralized applications (DApps). Avalanche is powered by its native token Avalanche (AVAX) and multiple consensus mechanisms. With Avalanche, users can create an unlimited number of customized and interoperable blockchains. To operate a blockchain on the Avalanche coin, AVAX, …

Theoretical research into a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) in the U.S. has found that distributed ledger architecture has “downsides.” The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Digital Currency Initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published their findings of their initial research into a CBDC on Feb 3. The research project, dubbed “Project Hamilton,” tested a “hypothetical general purpose CBDC” using two potential models. The first one processed transactions through “ordering server” distributed ledger technology (DLT), which organized the validated transactions into blocks to create an ordered transaction history. The researchers were able to use this architecture to …

The Uniswap decentralized exchange (DEX) is the most popular DEX built on the Ethereum blockchain. For users wondering, "What is Uniswap?," this article provides an overview of what it is and how it works as well as several ways users can get started using the Uniswap DEX. With Uniswap, users can swap crypto tokens without having to rely on an intermediary. Not having to rely on a third party leads to next to no economic rents being collected. Instead, Uniswap relies on smart contracts to execute trades. Smart contracts are algorithms that self-execute once certain preset conditions are met. How …

Switzerland took another step to clarify the roadmap for integrating central bank digital currencies (CBDC) into the current financial system. The Swiss National Bank (SNB), the country's central bank, completed the second phase of Project Helvetia with its partners by integrating wholesale CBDC into the existing back-office systems and processes of five banks, namely Citi, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Hypothekarbank Lenzburg and UBS. The Bank for International Settlements and Swiss financial infrastructure service provider SIX joined as partners of SNB in Project Helvetia Phase II, which took place during the fourth quarter of 2021. Envisioned as a multi-phase investigation on …

Tristan Frizza of Zeta Markets: Tristan is the core contributor to Zeta Markets, an under-collateralized DeFi derivatives platform, providing liquid derivatives trading to individuals and institutions alike. “We’ve seen a Cambrian explosion in the DeFi ecosystem in 2021, with peak TVL approaching $300 billion vs the 2020 peak of $21 billion. This sounds like the growth surely has to slow. Yet, DeFi still represents just a fraction of CeFi trading volumes. At Zeta, we see a clear opportunity for more and more CeFi infrastructure to be built on-chain in a permissionless manner. This will unlock innovative products that have previously …

Yat Siu of Animoca Brands Yat is the executive chairman and co-founder of Animoca Brands, which delivers digital property rights to the world’s gamers and internet users, thereby creating a new asset class, play-to-earn economies and a more equitable digital framework contributing to the building of the open Metaverse. “2021 was the year of NFTs, and in the second half of the year, we saw a growing emphasis on GameFi. This trend will continue well into 2022. Real mass adoption of DeFi will happen via GameFi, which will explode in growth during 2022 as the potential for mass financial inclusion …

Yaniv Tal of The Graph Yaniv is a co-founder and CEO at Edge & Node, and co-founder of The Graph, a decentralized indexing protocol used by blockchains such as Ethereum. “Many people and institutions got started with DeFi in 2021, but we haven’t even started mass adoption yet. As more and more retail and payment systems start integrating with crypto, people will be able to keep their money in crypto, bypassing the traditional banking system, and benefit from high interest rates made possible by the productive use of protocol tokens.” These quotes have been edited and condensed. The views, thoughts …

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) published a report into its two-year research project into wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) that emphasized the benefits of digitizing and autonomizing manual, paper-based banking processes using distributed ledger technology (DLT). The report marks the conclusion of the two-year project named “Project Atom” that was conducted in partnership with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), National Australia Bank (NAB), Perpetual, and ConsenSys, along with additional input from King & Wood Mallesons. Commenting on Project Atom, RBA’s assistant governor (Financial System) Michele Bullock noted that it “demonstrated the potential for a wholesale CBDC and …

South Korea’s Shinhan Bank and Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR) have completed a proof of concept that is designed to conduct international remittances using stablecoins on the Hedera Network. The new proof of concept by South Korea's Shinhan Bank for remittances can send money internationally within seconds for a fraction of a cent on the Hedera Network. Hedera claims that the average fee per transaction on its network is $0.0001, and the average transaction time is 3-5 seconds, both vast improvements from what is currently available from traditional remittances. In a Nov. 29 announcement, Hedera stated that it aims to determine whether …

European central banks ramp up their efforts to utilize distributed ledger technology (DLT), the foundation of blockchain, in central bank money settlements. Banca d’Italia and Deutsche Bundesbank, central banks of Italy and Germany, respectively, joined forces to work on settlements in central bank money of DLT-based asset exchanges. The official announcement stressed that the primary goal of the joint workshop was not to use DLT as a replacement for conventional systems. Instead, the initiative aims to complement the current central bank money settlement practices with a programmable trigger mechanism that connects the DLT-based asset, like a tokenized security, and cash …